Zelena, the Wicked Witch of Oz in Once Upon a Time, portrayed by Rebecca Mader, embodies the expressive and dramatic spirit of an ESFJ 4w3. Her blend of outward charm, emotional intensity, and deep desire for significance speaks to the heart of an evil ESFJ bound for vengeance.
ESFJ 4w3 Characters
Why is Zelena the Wicked Witch from Once Upon a Time an ESFJ? Continue reading! The headers for each section are clickable, so you can easily access more information about the dominant function and the Enneagram type, or discover more characters who share the type.
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Extraverted Feeling
Zelena is very forward about her emotions and reactive in front of other characters. She broadcasts her hurts and tries to shape other people’s feelings. She dramatically expresses her pain, fury, jealousy, frustration, and triumph, wanting them to witness and react to it (with envy, hatred, resentment, etc. ). She wants the entire room to know and feel what she is feeling through her rants at Regina about the “life she stole,” her taunts of Rumplestiltskin, and her confrontation with Snow and Charming.
Zelena frames everything in an emotional context; “She got everything, and I got nothing,” “I was unloved/unwanted,” weaponizing her feelings to make people side with her. Her self-worth rises and falls based on who loves her, who chooses her, and who admires or fears her. She tries to manufacture relationships by forcing herself into Regina’s life, demanding attention from Rumple, trying to create a family, and wanting to be the most “important” sister. She intends for her big, emotional speeches in public to provoke guilt, pity, fear, or admiration. She is easily offended, slighted, and angry when others try to manipulate her.
Introverted Sensing
She does not move on; all of her envy, grudges, and desires are rooted in memory, tradition, and past comparisons. She nurses specific, detailed stories about who wronged her and why (Regina had the life she should have had, the attention she should have had, and the teaching that was hers!). Her entire villain arc stems from one moment in her life, where Regina got chosen over her, and she wants to undo all of time so she can go back, replace her, and become powerful. She feels she was wronged in the past, so it needs to be reset; she needs to take Regina’s life, rewrite the family dynamics, and reclaimed what she “deserved” from birth. She hangs onto and nurses feelings about particular moments in her past: Cora choosing Regina over her, Rumple choosing Regina, the midwife abandoning Zelena. Her fantasies are about the “right” kind of life, family, parents, and role in society.
Extraverted Intuition
Zelena is innovative in her spell craft; she thinks she can create a time reversal spell where none has succeeded before her, and works toward that aim from different directions throughout her season. She brainstorms about risky spells that nobody else believes can be done, such as soul-binding, memory swapping, personal transformations, and time alteration, and she uses anyone who stumbles into her path to do it. She spells Hook so that the next time he kisses Emma, he will remove her powers; she takes Rumple’s dagger to control him and bend him to her will, knowing no one can defeat them both; she throws problems in Regina’s path, and manipulates the emotions of Snow, Charming, and others. She also thinks she can “reinvent” herself as the “good” sister, a powerful witch, by imagining how her life would have been different based on a handful of choices. For a short time, with Glinda, she tries to become a different person. And she sees her fate, future, and possibilities in intuitive language (“stealing my destiny”).
Introverted Thinking
Her villain arc would not happen if Zelena could question her own feelings and assumptions; she simply goes with what she feels. She constructs elaborate reasons why her pain is justified, rather than taking it apart. Her reasoning is inconsistent and faulty (“if no one loves me, I must be unworthy of love, and need to steal a life worth loving”). She likes to tinker with magic, bending it to her will, in the way Ti users do; experimenting. But her logic is basic. Loved means being chosen; unloved is injustice. We have to fix the past in order to have a good future, instead of realizing every step of how she has choices and can change her own life and be good on the spot.
The Enneagram 4
Zelena frames her entire identity around being the overlooked, tragic one whose wounds are so deep that no one else can understand or relate to her. She was abandoned, overlooked, forgotten, mistreated, has gone green from her envy, etc. She romantics her suffering and frames it as part of her unique destiny, then compares herself obsessively with Regina. Unhealthy 4s think there is not enough of whatever they crave (love, power, attention) to go around, so if they are not receiving it, you don’t deserve it. Zelena takes this another step, in that she wants to steal it from Regina and unmake her destiny; it’s not enough to long for it, she has to ruin Regina’s life to have it. She flouts her anguish with grand speeches, dramatic entrances, constant laments about being wronged, and a refusal to see that her pain isn’t unique, that she was not singled out and attacked, but merely a byproduct of an awful mother, who has choices to make. Zelena enjoys being spiteful.
The 3 Wing
It’s not enough for her to get what she wants; Zelena wants to be seen doing it, to have everyone bask in awe of her spells, be impressed with her passion, motivation, and drive. Part of her jealousy is that Regina has to work hard at learning to cast magic, when Zelena can do it naturally with talent. She longs to be seen, to be important, to be the favorite, popular, influential teacher who gets all the attention from Rumple and who is worthy of her mother’s love.
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